Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/670

 656 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

exclusive, collision-provoking, or liable to excess are steadily depreciated. It were a wise leader of the pack who should get them to bay the moon instead of fighting over a bone; for there are not enough bones, but there is enough moon. It is equally politic to divert men from pleasures, such as those connected with sex and property, the pursuit of which endangers social peace. The sexual instinct, for example, is habitually dismissed with slanting allusion and contempt. In all schedules of social val- ues the great motor force of reproduction cuts, indeed, a sorry figure. Then feasting and drinking, orgy and fight- ing, so naively esteemed by natural men, come to be frowned upon. First deemed to be sinful, then abominable, they are finally declared to be evils and not goods. In this way the ani- mal eager to eat, drink, mate, and fight seems to get metamor- phosed into a creature of fine tastes and noble aims. And yet these crude pleasures bulk so largely in the concern of men as they are that we cannot regard the low appraisal everywhere openly put upon them as a mere consensus of opinion. It is the valuation of society acting under the instinct of self-preserva- tion. It resembles that conventional distinction between clean and unclean in the flesh of animals which has become sacro- sanct to most of us.

In the third place, society " appreciates " the safe pleasures those, like companionship, converse, or sport, which are cooper- ative ; those, like the enjoyment of nature or music or works of art, which are inexclusive ; those, like health or beauty or humor or knowledge or personal excellence, which can be .expanded with- out limit and witlwut clash with others ; those which, being ideal, do not wastefully consume strength and life. The appetites and passions would tear society to pieces. But the longing for these pleasures but confirms and perfects men in their association. A luring of the individual in this direction by high appraisals is, therefore, as valid a method of social control as the terrifying thunders of a Sinai.

Quite of themselves men come to covet the conditions of physical well-being. It is chiefly in their attitude toward non-